Investing & expertise

Our investment approach features a focus on avoiding undue risk while seeking to deliver long-term outperformance. We manage risk with a strategic, disciplined approach at the portfolio level, and allocate investment selection to active managers we've carefully vetted and deployed. This helps us maintain relatively steady performance on the way to providing positive financial outcomes.

Vanguard was built on indexing. We pioneered the strategy, and we’re still leading the way well into the 21st century.

Driven by advanced modeling and trading techniques, our index funds are run by an expert team of traders and portfolio managers. The funds feature an enduring record of offering tight index tracking and low fees. The result? More than $7 trillion invested in our index funds.¹

As the market fluctuates, you want a team that can manage your investments based on strategies, not trends.

Our actively managed funds are built on sound and sophisticated investment strategies from some of the top minds in the industry. So you can count on the expertise of not only our in-house managers, but also the two dozen investment firms we work with.

With a balanced fund, you can reduce volatility by increasing diversification. 

Balanced mutual funds invest in both bonds and stocks and can be actively managed or index funds (or a mix of both). By potentially holding hundreds—sometimes thousands—of securities in a single balanced fund, you can get more diversification than you would by buying individual bonds and stocks.

Align your investments with your values.

Our ESG funds, which have differing investment styles and objectives, invest in stocks and bonds. They're a great way to complement your portfolio with funds that reflect your personal preferences. Some of our funds are indexed and follow an exclusionary strategy that omits companies that don't meet certain ESG criteria. We also have three active funds focusing on companies that meet certain ESG criteria, such as demonstrating leading ESG practices.

Of course, there are numerous concerns that can add to the pressure of trying to maximize your organization’s impact. Spending policies, portfolio construction, liquidity needs, and cost can all make it difficult to manage your nonprofit portfolio by yourself.

That’s why we offer a series of low-cost, single-fund solutions for smaller nonprofits that offer portfolio diversity while transferring portfolio construction to us.

And for larger nonprofit institutions, we also offer liquid alternatives and other alternative assets.